I’ve slept with the lights on. Fallen asleep with the TV running. Refused to go to the bathroom after dark. Begged God. Tried Aromatherapy. Went to sleep specialists. I’ve even taken medications of various sorts.

Some of it worked for a little while - but none of it worked forever.

No matter what I did, no matter how old I was when I did it - my abilities always came back.

One day it clicked.

I was in my early 20s watching a horror movie.

In the movie, there was a medium who was called in to deal with the Spirits in some old house. One of the characters asked her how it was she did what she did. Before she answered she took a long drag of her cigarette and a deep breath,

“It was either this or go my whole life thinking I was crazy - so I chose this.”

In that moment, everything froze. I realized I could choose to do something good with my abilities and at the same time, not be crazy.

But that wasn’t the first time I came back to my age old question of, “Do I really want to do this. . . be a medium?”

I came back to this question countless times before finally deciding I would make mediumship my life.

For me, becoming a medium, wasn’t a sudden one-time decision.

In my family, the abilities that I have were always referred to as a curse.

This curse was then linked to a belief of mine that I was the flawed, different one. Being the only ‘cursed one’ in the family, I thought there was something wrong with me. And as a human wanting love and acceptance, I wanted more than anything to get rid of what made me separate.

Over time, the more normal I tried to become, the less like ‘me’ I felt. I started to feel like I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing with my life. I started to wake up more and more, thinking, what on earth am I even doing?

I was medicating myself, occupying my time, pretending to be someone I wasn’t and doing things I didn’t care about - all in order to fit in and hide the fact that I had a curse.

And by this time, my father, who also had the curse, was long dead.

Deceased from an alcohol problem he developed from just trying to be normal too, I knew that the road I was traveling down wasn’t a healthy one.

The road of self-avoidance wasn’t a road I wanted to travel on anymore.

So, in order to figure out what I needed to do next, I did the only thing I hadn’t tried yet.

I found a medium.

At a small dining room table on a hot summer’s day in Cassadaga, Florida, a medium named Julie told me that my father had been there for quite a while before I’d arrived.

So upset by the time I got there, I could do nothing but yell at her and him. These are the things that came out of my mouth:

“Why are you doing this to me?!”

“Stop haunting me!”

“Why do I have to do this?”

“Why can’t I just be normal?”

“How will I ever find a boyfriend now?!”

My father’s message remained clear, despite my protest:

If I didn’t accept my abilities today, I would end up just like him. Dead from complications stemming from my own self-avoidance.

Alcoholism, drug addiction, abusive relationships - he didn’t know - but these are all things mediums can do to self-avoid and hide from their gifts. If I didn’t own who I was and stop the family curse, which wasn’t mediumship at all, it was neglect of the self, he warned it would do nothing but continue.

My children and his grandchildren would all grow up hating themselves just as much as I did.

He had come that day to urge me to stop living life the way he did - by pretending I didn’t have something beautiful to share with the world - and to beg me to please not end up like him.

By the end of the reading, I was crying.

To me, there was no more a horrible thought than someone I loved having to live the way I did - hating myself and feeling flawed because of who I really was.

That day I promised to him that I would end the curse.

I would accept my gifts and in turn, myself.

And from there, I would help teach other people about their abilities, too, with the hope that they would realize they aren’t flawed because of who they are, either. That’s my favorite part about being a medium today actually.

I get to help my fellow mediums, with the thought that soon, no one will ever have to wake up and feel flawed again.

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